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With a single dessert and just two glasses of wine our bill was kept in check - but the effort of doing so was not much fun
Babbo
Film
This is a film with beautiful performances and a visual style that urges you towards reflection
Bright Star
Theatre
Although the first half of Kwei-Armah’s production is pacy, funny and intelligent, the energy level then drops off
Seize The Day
I loved this film from start to finish. Take the girlfriend, tell your mum - I'd see it again tomorrow and will buy the dvd.
I saw this last night and can't remember the last time I was so moved in the theatre.
I have been to many of London's so-called best Japanese restaurants and none have been as good as the food that I've had at Aqua Kyoto
London,
Jane Cornwell's rating
Reader rating
Description: Grooving electronica based songs about 21st Century America played on violin, keyboards, samples and voice by the innovative composer/songwriter and her band.
Phone: 0845120 7500
Website: www.barbican.org.uk
Email: info@barbican.org.uk
Trains: Tube/BR: Moorgate/Barbican 
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 9am-8pm, Sun 11am-8pm
Extra info: Pub, Parking, Food
Woman of many voices: Laurie Anderson is acknowledged as a major cultural force in her homeland
Laurie Anderson has many voices — breathy, choral, sonorous, distorted — and she directs them all at America. This slow yet powerful show examines a changed US of A through the eyes of an appalled yet analytical New Yorker (or as she speak-sings “a self-motivated spy”) . Long acknowledged as a major cultural force in her homeland (whatever that now means), her recent marriage to rock god Lou Reed must have been some happening.
With her gamine haircut, twinkling eyes and dimples, 61-year-old Anderson was a benign (and wedding ring-less) presence inside her computer corral, wielding a toy-sized electric violin and deploying her effects-laden voices on a stage dotted with votive candles. But after a shimmering opening monologue that recalled Aristophanes’s The Birds, her fury at American obsessions with security, control and the so-called war on terror became obvious.
Backed by a spectacle-wearing trio of erstwhile jazzers on keyboards, guitar and viola, Anderson delivered her evocative — if occasionally soporific — song cycle over a foundation of groove electronics.
“There’s no place for freedom when war is here to stay,” she sang in her default soprano, flicking a foot pedal to conjure beats like choppers’ wings. The verse-chorus of Only An Expert and a mock paean to “Underwear Gods” on city billboards led to a moving encore: Anderson on nothing but keening violin, surrounded by flickering light, her eyes locked onto her audience.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
